Marketing, Media, and Technology Thoughts

Tuesday Morning Digital Tidbits

Here are a few tidbits from this mornings news that peeked my interest:

Even Top Quants Struggle to Draw Inflows: Shaken by the market turbulence that began in August 2007, institutional investors have been pulling assets out of quant equity strategies, and overall flows are likely to be flat at best for at least the near future. Even quant managers whose performance hasn’t suffered are feeling the sting. It’s a sharp turnaround from as recently as two years ago, when quants were delivering strong returns and raking in institutional assets. According to Casey Quirk and Associates, U. S. institutions put a net $93 billion into quants in 2005, and almost as much, $88 billion, in 2006. By some estimates, quant strategies globally topped $500 billion by mid-2007.

Apple iPhone: 8 Million and Counting: By tracking the sequence of IMEIs, they can now say, with a fair degree of certainty, that as of Aug. 30, when BillH’s daughters bought that phone, Apple had manufactured at least 5,649,000 iPhone 3Gs. Added to the 2.4 million first-generation iPhones the company reported it had sold in the first six months of 2008, that means that Apple has manufactured more than 8 million iPhones this year . Moreover, with Apple’s overseas partners reportedly turning out iPhones at the rate of 800,000 units per week, it seems likely that Apple will build — if not sell — its 10 millionth iPhone before the end of September.

Facebook Selling Digital Gifts at a $35m run rate: The vast majority of facebook gifts are bought from the first screen of gifts in the directory – almost 80% of the total sales come from the group of the first 20 gifts. This points to the self reinforcing nature of popularity (the crowdiness of crowds rather than the wisdom of crowds) when popularity data is made public.